


speaking out with one voice

by smolqueernerds



Category: The Ever Afters Series - Shelby Bach
Genre: F/F, I know nothing about bands or relationships, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Polyamory, mentioned Rory Landon/Lena LaMarelle/Chase Turnleaf, trans!Chase, trans!Lena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7852747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolqueernerds/pseuds/smolqueernerds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where the Goblin Priestesses are four humans who form a queer poly punk band.</p>
            </blockquote>





	speaking out with one voice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lulla_lunekjaer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulla_lunekjaer/gifts).



> This was something else entirely, and then it was Elizabeth's birthday fic, and then it wasn't Elizabeth's birthday anymore, and now it's the last day of summer, so I'm just going to post what I have. (And you thought *you* were late to the party, E? Anyway, ilysm, take this insufficient tribute.)
> 
> Remember the Goblin Priestesses from OWAW and OEAE? No? You should go back and reread the series, then. But you don't really need to know anything about them to read this AU because there's really no information about them in canon. Anyway, everyone is human, everyone plays an instrument, everyone is dating. Enjoy.
> 
> Title from We're All in This Together from HSM.

There’s a picture of them all, the first day they met, hanging on the mini-fridge of their trailer in one of those corny frames covered in foam shapes that Ciona picked up from the dollar store. Fifteen other girls and three counsellors crowd the picture, but it's not hard to pick the Priestesses out.  
Look to the very left; there's Unizi, stocky as a calf and black from the tips of their dyed fringe to the toes of their spray-painted sneakers, hunching their shoulders to try and disappear into the background.  
Standing tall in the back row is Vionnia, bangle-covered arms stretched to the sky with fingers splayed wide in an attempt to catch the viewer’s eye, walnut-hued hair hanging straight and fine to her waist.  
Ciona smiles from the right edge, wearing one of her strangely patterned sundresses (white cotton dotted with snails and slugs), dark blond braids hanging down past the glinting rectangular lenses of her glasses.  
And Muire, sitting cross-legged on the lawn in dead center, is sporting both a gap-toothed grin and her first dye job (pale auburn; it looked much darker on the packet). She remembers being inordinately proud of her inexpert work. Straightening up from the bathroom sink and seeing a stranger’s dripping, grinning reflection felt akin to baptism.

A few inches away, there's a Polaroid of their first official, actually-got-asked-to-play gig in an Oregon nightclub, tacked up with a magnet in the shape of a pug. Unizi is cradling their guitar to their chest, their fingers a blur on the strings as their tongue pokes out between their teeth in concentration. Vionnia perches on a stool, posture perfect, hands poised to descend onto the keyboard. Ciona’s drumsticks are pointed at the ceiling, her lips round in a silent howl of exaltation. And Muire, dipping her mike like a dance partner, is turned to the side. Her profile - long neck, hawk nose, gelled two-inch spikes of violet hair - is captured with perfect clarity.

“We haven’t changed that much,” Unizi says. “You’re still a nerd, and you’re still a dork, and you’re still a geek.” It’s unclear which statement is directed at whom, but they receive equal pummeling from each of their bandmates.  
“I can’t believe I had bangs,” Vionnia says, examining her image with a critical eye. “They completely wrecked my face shape, what was I thinking?”  
“God,” Ciona says, “we were so tiny.”  
God, Muire thinks, we were so broken.  
(Were. The past tense is heavily operative.)  
Gone are the yellow-green splotches that once peeked out from under Ciona’s sleeves and the hems of her skirts.  
Vionnia’s bones no longer look as though they are in danger of tearing through her skin like blades through paper.  
The frown lines that once etched Unizi’s face have softened into something less stark, more gracious.  
Muire wonders how she’s changed.

“How would you describe your genre of music?” the reporters ask, shoving microphones under their noses.  
“Good,” Unizi says.  
“I don’t even know,” Vionnia admits.  
“Rock, but with some punk and funk and R&B mixed in,” Ciona says. “Plus a little bit of bluegrass, and there’s a definite classical influence, and once in awhile Vionnia likes to get jazzy or Muire will break out the rap. Well, I say ‘rap.’ She thinks it’s rap, anyway.”  
“Our music is soul music,” Muire says. “You can dance to it, cry to it, scream out the lyrics, listen as you’re falling asleep. It’s music for fighting, enduring, living.”  
(“That was so damn fake deep,” Unizi tells her afterwards, and Muire throws a muffin at them.)

They’ve never gone a week without doing a show. If there’s no venue that will take them, they’ll haul their equipment out to a park or a nice bit of sidewalk.  
Vionnia won’t let them print out flyers; she makes them, handwrites the details and does a quick pen illustration of the four of them, different each gig. They’ve become quite a collectible for Priestess fans - a flyer goes for about $250 on eBay. Tack them up in every direction for a few blocks, wait two days, and perform on the third night - usually three to ten songs, depending on the size of the resulting crowd.  
Taped to the lid of Unizi’s open guitar case is a sign informing audience members that donations are greatly appreciated, and each Priestess lugs along a backpack bulging with copies of one of their albums; get one for five dollars, collect them all for twenty. Half the time, their loads are barely lightened, but Vionnia insists on optimism.  
Along with Ciona’s knack for the stock market and a few months a year of parking the trailer in some town to find part-time jobs, it’s enough to stay afloat.

“Who writes your songs?” the reporters ask. “Which of you comes up with the lyrics? Do you write your own material, or do you use a ghostwriter?”  
Muire and Vionnia tack on their best enigmatic smiles and decline to comment.  
“How would I know?” Unizi asks. “I’m just the guitarist.”  
Ciona looks from side to side, then leans in closer, motioning the reporter in with her pointer finger. “We just assume that it happens,” she whispers, as if disclosing a great secret. “‘Cause no one else is in the room where it hap-”  
The rest of them drag her away bodily.

Here is the truth, the one that will never appear in any magazine. On the nights when they four sleep piled together, a tangle of limbs and hair and clothing and breath and heartbeats and wishes, snatches of words float to the murky surface of their dreams.  
When they wake, they jot them down. Together they fit them together like puzzle pieces, find the gaps and fill them in. Muire searches for the melody that’s already there, waiting, within the syllables and emphases, and coaxes it into the light; the other three find harmonies and weave them together. They always play it together for the first time in Unizi’s cousin’s ex-boyfriend’s aunt’s recording studio. “The moment of truth,” Vionnia says.  
Later, in the darkness of their trailer, they’ll put Unizi’s and Vionnia’s magic fingers and Ciona’s rhythms and Muire’s mouth to work once more, and the moments of truth come over and over.

It's never been easy, what they have, and it never will be. From day one there’ve been tears, slammed doors, forgotten chores, misplaced articles of clothing, filched food, bumping noses, and a constant lack of conditioner. The same frustrations play out again and again; Muire forgetting her turn to do the laundry, Ciona trying to hide her nightmares, Unizi’s sarcasm going too far, everyone nagging Vionnia to eat breakfast.  
But it's always been natural, no matter how hard they have to work for it. It's always been right.

Every few months, a woman named Rapunzel calls them up. They’re unlisted, but she knows all their phone numbers anyway. In a whispery voice (Unizi’s convinced she uses some kind of voice scrambling software), she’ll recommend a location for their next performance. Sometimes it’s nearby, sometimes three states away. Sometimes she’s got a venue lined up for them, sometimes they have to play streetside. But without fail, a Rapunzel-endorsed gig means a packed house, albums selling like hotcakes, and fans bubbling over with stories about how the Priestesses have changed their lives. They scan the crowd every time, but when all they have to go off is a voice and a name, it’s difficult to look for the fan with the secret identity.  
“She’s a guardian angel,” Vionnia insists.  
“She’s a stalker, and she could ax murder us at any time,” Unizi asserts. No one’s sure if they’re joking. “She’s just lulling us into a false sense of security.”  
“Whoever she is,” Muire says, “we should put her on the payroll.”  
“We don’t have a payroll,” Ciona points out.  
“Still, though.”

“When did you all come out to each other?” asks one particularly ambitious reporter looking for a fringe feature.  
For once, they all decline to comment, but when she’s gone, Muire asks, “Guys, tell me if I’m wrong here, but have we ever actually…”  
Three heads swing back and forth in unison.  
“I think we skipped the coming out and went straight to the making out,” Vionnia says.  
“In that case,” Muire starts, pulling her knees up to her chest, “I’ve got something that I need to share. I’m sorry that I’ve kept it from you for so long, and…even though I hope we can still be friends, I will understand if you're angry with me.” She discreetly pinches her arm and forces out a tear, waiting a few seconds for it to trail down her cheek. “Guys… I am so, so, so gay.”  
“Oh my god!” Vionnia squeals at a window-shattering pitch, launching herself up from her chair to throw her arms around Muire. “Me too! I'm so glad you said something. I would've come out earlier, but I didn't want to be the only lesbian, y’know?”  
“Queer as a three-dollar bill,” Unizi offers as they add themselves to the group hug.  
“Lone pansexual out,” Ciona says with a deep sigh, but she’s pulled into the pile anyway.

“Hey, guys?” Muire asks, sticking her head into the trailer on a hot summer morning just as the others are finishing breakfast. “Rapunzel called. How do you feel about North Carolina?”

The first three fans in the signing line after the NC concert are all holding copies of “Winds of Change,” their first album.  
“Who should we make these out to?” Unizi inquires.  
“Chase,” says the boy on the right.  
“Lena,” says the girl on the left.  
“Rory,” finishes the girl in the middle.  
“What are your favorite songs from the album?” Vionnia asks conversationally as she plucks Lena’s copy from her fingers and scribbles her signature before passing it down the line to Ciona.  
“Maze of Mirrors,” Chase and Lena say in unison, sharing a glance over Rory’s head, even though that requires Lena to tilt her chin near-vertically.  
“Helped us both figure out a lot of stuff,” Lena says, running her thumb over the pink, white, and blue beads of the bracelet she’s wearing.  
“The face that’s looking back at me is not the one that I should see,” Unizi warbles off-key, because even though they wrote those words and that tune, they’ve never been able to sing it properly.  
“Niz,” Muire says, “there’s a reason you play guitar.”  
“Screw you,” Unizi says, bumping her with their shoulder.  
“Yeah, well,” Rory says, throwing her arms over her friends’ shoulders and pulling them closer, “‘On Either Side’ helped me figure some stuff out about these two.”  
Chase’s cough sounds an awful lot like a smothered “oblivious,” and Rory smacks him upside the head before pressing a kiss to his cheek and then turning to plant one on Lena, and maybe ‘friends’ was a rather conservative assessment of the trio.  
“You guys helped me figure out that I didn’t have to choose,” Rory says, looking each Priestess in the eyes one by one. “So, thank you.”  
“Guys, we’re supposed to be punk,” Unizi mutters to a sniffing Vionnia and a beaming Ciona, but the rest of them aren’t fooled; they can see the shine in their datemate’s eyes.  
“Thank you,” Muire tells her, tells all three of them, as she passes Chase’s album back. “Knowing that we made that kind of difference...it’s amazing. You guys are amazing.”  
It may not go down in history as her most eloquent fan response, but it works.

  
As is tradition, after the show has closed and all their equipment is packed up, the Priestesses head to the nearest all-night diner for burgers and ice cream. As they’re all squished into a semicircular booth, scraping the bottom of the sundae dish for the last dregs of caramel sauce, Unizi clears their throat and stands up, tapping their water glass with a curly fry in lieu of a fork.  
“Okay,” they start, “I know we’re all feeling unacceptably sappy after meeting those kids, so it was only a matter of time before one of you did this, and that’s why I’m going to do it, so we can all get it over with. Okay.” Another throat-clearing. “Before I met you guys, if anyone had told me I was going to love my life this much someday, I would have laughed in their face. And sometimes I’m scared that everything since I’ve met you is just a really long and complicated dream and sooner or later I’m going to wake up and be sixteen and alone and lost. And I don’t really think I know how to live without you guys, but I didn’t know how to live at all before you guys, and I am so goddamn lucky that I met you and that I get to perform with you and travel with you and wake up with you every morning and I don’t tell you this nearly enough but I am so freaking gone on you guys, you are the loves of my life and I want to stay with all of you forev-”  
The end of their sentence is lost as the other three finally give in to the urge to smother them in hugs, and as Ciona is grabbing Unizi’s cheeks and recklessly planting kisses on everywhere she can reach and Vionnia is shrieking _babe oh my god_ over and over again at any and all of them and the cashier’s eyebrows are hovering around his hairline (they’ll have to leave him a sizable tip), Muire is sixteen years old again, ending her last summer diary entry with, _is this what love feels like?_

(It was, of course. It is.)


End file.
